Mortgages
How mortgage debt actually behaves over 15 or 30 years: what amortization does to your early payments, when refinancing genuinely saves money and when a lower rate costs you more, and how much extra principal is worth at different points in the term. These guides work through complete schedules rather than quoting rules of thumb.
A Lower Rate That Costs You $55,000: The Refinance Trap
Dropping from 7% to 6% cut this borrower's payment by $360 a month and added $54,936 to their lifetime interest. The rate was not the problem. The term reset was. Here is how to tell the difference.
February 11, 2026 · 9 min readWhy Your First Mortgage Payment Is 86% Interest
Amortization is not a bank trick, but it does front-load interest in a way that surprises most borrowers. Here is the arithmetic, a year-by-year breakdown of a real $300,000 loan, and what it means for prepaying, refinancing, and selling early.